The Invasion
by Ballerina Terminator
Summary: When they are suddenly besieged by complications in their work, Clint and Natasha are each left with questions that they don't know how to answer. The serenity that was there was hard-won and treasured, so how did it start to slip away?
1. Prologue

**My most dear readers,**

**It is with great pleasure and immense pride that I present to you my 8****th**** Avengers story. I have been laboring over this story for almost half a year now, and I am so excited to finally share it with you. I tell you honestly, I think this one is really something special, and I hope you too think so. As I'm sure you will quickly realize, this is a multi-chaptered story, and I can assure you that the updates will be frequent and prompt without any loss of quality. If you would be so kind as to forgive the brevity of the Prologue, I should have Chapter 1 posted by this Thursday (American time), and Chapter 2 by the following Monday! I will tell you that from this point on, my stories will no longer be able to stand alone, so consider yourself warned.**

**I do want to thank everyone who has given me encouragement up to now, and I want you to know how much that really means to me. I simply love to write, and you can't conceive how the time you have taken to talk to me about my work has inspired me not just to keep going but to always try to be better. When I tell you that this story is for you, I hope you understand that I am offering the only gift I can, and I hope you are made happy by it.**

**Now, if you will forgive my brief diversion into what I can only describe as sentimentality (forgive the reference, it was unintended), without further ado, I give you my story.**

** Truly, all of my love,**

** Ballerina Terminator**

Prologue

The Black Widow was almost relieved when she finally located the master bedroom of the villa. The estate was situated on the far edge of the city, and the house sprawled over the extensive grounds that were bordered by the high walls that crawled with guards. The house's chilly halls were lined with windows, but the overcast night provided no illumination to ease her navigation of the building, a task which had been made especially challenging by the fact that the floor plan she had memorized was clearly out of date. She had mentally reviewed her path through the building repeatedly prior to the mission, and, for the most part, the original footprint of the building was still there. Nevertheless, the minor alterations left her feeling haunted by a sense of disorientation.

Any relief she might have felt at reaching her destination quickly dissipated when she let the door drift opened, gun drawn, eyes searching for any movement in the room. There was no movement because there was no one in the room which may have been the master bedroom at one time but was so no longer.

Large stacks of cash from three different nations were stacked on a table that stood against one wall, but it was only one of several tables that filled the room. Two of the other tables held heavily taped packages, stacked high like bricks. A quick calculation told her that there were something like six hundred packages on each table, but she didn't need to test the contents to know that it was cocaine. She knew whose house she was in, after all. Her limited experience with the drug made it impossible for her to estimate the weight of the stockpile, but she personally considered it to be a hell of a lot of drugs. The rest of the tables were covered in boxes and boxes of ammunition. As interesting as all these items were, what it all boiled down to was that her subject was not sleeping here.

A sharp crackle given off by her comm unit made her wince, and she removed the tiny implant from her ear for to look it over. When she saw no visible damage, she carefully reinserted the piece in her ear.

She pressed the button to transmit. "Control?" After a minute with no response she tried again. "Control, come in," she said softly.

Again, there was no answer, but she knew that didn't mean that she wasn't being received. "Control, this is Black Widow. My comm unit has stopped receiving. If you are receiving this transmission, the subject is not in place; I repeat, the subject is not in the western bedroom. I'm going to regroup with Hawkeye in the central courtyard."

She took a step forward to pull the door closed, and she felt a slight give of a pressure plate just under her left foot. A siren began echoing through the corridors, and everything went to hell.


	2. Chapter 1 - You Are Not Alone

**My dear readers,**

** So, does anyone watch classic movies? You know how, in the old trailers, they gone so dramatically? "Action and Adventure! Suspense and Intrigue! Laughter and Tears! Theirs was a romance for the AGES! **_**One thousand wild horses could not tear them apart!**_**" Well, it's not going to get **_**that**_** extreme, of course, but this is kind of how I feel when I think about this story.**

**Have fun!**

**-BT**

* * *

**Chapter One**

**"You Are Not Alone"**

"You know, I don't usually believe in curses," Clint started, but Natasha cut him off.

"Things go wrong," Natasha said patiently. "It's not the first time we've had difficulties, and, God knows, it won't be the last."

It wasn't exactly that simple, of course. Their time traipsing around the northwest of South America over the last seventeen days had been fraught with serious and unexpected complications, and during the operation just outside of Bogota, things had looked pretty grim, bordering on the catastrophic. If Coulson had been too slow on the uptake, it would have moved well past the borders of catastrophic and straight into the realm of tragic.

"We're not thinking about that right now," Natasha continued. "We have less than a week before we are shipped off again to yet another continent, and we are going to take the opportunity to enjoy a bit of a break." She propped her feet up on the single free chair at their café table and leant back in her own, enjoying the nice day.

They sat outside a small ice cream shop located in a city near the SHIELD base in the southern part of the United States where they were staying for their short break between missions. Coulson had some work to do there for a few days, and Clint and Natasha had taken the opportunity to have a pseudo-vacation before their next assignment.

Clint had chosen a vehicle from the motor pool for their use, one that, Natasha had noticed, Clint had chosen for its safety rating rather than its style. It had always vaguely amused Natasha that when Clint was off duty he was an ideal driver, observing every possible traffic law, a fact that was all the more amusing since, for the sake of a mission, she had seen him drive in a way that would have made Evel Knievel sit up and say "No one is _that_ reckless."

Not that Natasha minded. Not one to often relinquish control, she was still perfectly happy to let Clint drive and take the opportunity to relax.

They had taken the day to go into town to stock up on personal items and wander around, content in the knowledge that, for a few days at least, they had absolutely no responsibilities. They went out in civilian clothing, Natasha in a bright yellow skirt and a turquoise tank top and Clint in jeans and a gray t-shirt Natasha had once picked out for his birthday because it matched his eyes. Natasha had a chance to grab a new toothbrush to replace the one accidentally left in Colombia, Clint picked up a couple of bags of pistachios at a grocery store, and they both wandered around a bookstore, looking for more reading material for their days off.

After lunch, they had found the ice cream shop where Clint had started ruminating over their last job over their dessert. It was Clint's habit to review all missions, especially failures, to see where improvements could be made. It was one of the things that made him one of the best. In fact, Clint already gone over the mission, but something about it continued to nag at him.

Natasha, however, was not having it. Reviewing was one thing, but there was no point in brooding on the matter. Clint relented, and, when they finished their ice creams, they wandered back to the car**.**

When Natasha had buckled her seat belt, she leaned the passenger seat back nearly as far as it would go and stretched out into a lounging position. Clint glanced at her for just a moment, taking note of her relaxed attitude. Her eyes were closed and she had a slight, serene smile playing on her lips – a level of ease that, at one time, he would not have expected to see from Natasha. He smiled to himself as he started the car and tuned the radio before he pulled into traffic. They passed through the city and the surrounding suburbs in companionable silence, Clint listening to the golden oldies while Natasha dozed in the seat beside him.

It still amused him that Tasha had become so comfortable with dozing so nonchalantly in her current public surroundings when only a few years before she had barely been willing to blink outside of her own quarters, and he could almost believe that she had been sleeping literally with one eye open.

Eventually, he exited the highway, and, as he came to a yield sign, he briefly glanced over at Natasha again as she yawned and, with a sleepy expression, took in the surrounding forested area before her eyes began to drift closed again. Clint signaled and turned right down a two-lane country road.

They had not gone very far down the road when a flicker of movement in the rear-view mirror caught Clint's eye. He was mildly perturbed to see a large green pick-up truck tailgating them badly. Clint moved over to the shoulder of the road to let the vehicle pass, and, for a minute the truck pulled forward as through pass before it slowed and dropped back to a more reasonable distance. Clint waited for a just a moment to make sure that the green pick-up would not attempt to pass again before pulling back into the proper lane. To Clint's confusion, the truck began to speed up again, and Clint, in turn, had to increase his speed to avoid being rear-ended.

The sudden change in speed made Natasha open her eyes in astonishment. She looked over at Clint questioningly and took in his tense expression and heard him mutter something angry about reckless driving before she looked around to the back. Incredibly, the green truck was gaining speed at an irrational rate. Abruptly, things took a violent turn for the worse. Natasha just had time enough to let out a soft gasp when the other driver pulled the steering wheel sharply, and the larger vehicle spun wildly and fishtailed around, ramming the right side of the vehicle. Natasha gave a much sharper gasp as metal crunched and glass shattered around her, and the smaller vehicle was forced into the on-coming lane of traffic, right in front of an eighteen-wheeler.

In the half-second that Clint had to make a decision, he turned the wheel hard to the left and drove the car right off the road. He felt a strange since of weightlessness as the car began to roll, and he heard Natasha shriek. Her cry was cut off abruptly when he felt a sharp pain on the side of his head, and fuzzy blackness overtook his vision.

When Clint came around, his first sensation was that of overwhelming disorientation. His second was of a cool hand on his face and another supporting the back of his head. It took him a moment to realize that Nat was talking to him, and she sounded uncharacteristically upset.

"Clint! Clint, wake up!"

He tried to answer her, but all that came out of his mouth was a groan. He squeezed his eyes tight shut before opening them and taking a look at his surroundings. They were upside-down to begin with, which at least accounted for the disorientation. Natasha, like him, was still strapped into her seat with her long skirts tucked up around her legs to keep them out of the way. Her red curls trailed along the ceiling of the car, and her face, flushed red with rushing blood, was tight with stress.

"Clint," she said in a firm, carefully controlled voice, "you had better answer me right now."

"You asked me something?" he said, bewildered.

She glared at him. "That will do," she said. Her tone was peevish, but her face had lost some of the look of tension.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Natasha's hand shot to the pistol that was holstered between the passenger seat and the center console, and she kept her hand there, tensed to draw and shoot in less than a heartbeat. The heavy panting of one who is badly out of shape was soon audible, and Natasha relaxed fractionally.

A short, round man with a ruddy complexion appeared, crouching down at Natasha's busted out window.

"Hey, are you folks okay in there?" His accent had a vaguely southern drawl that was still discernible through his gasps of air and obvious panic.

"Yes, thanks," she replied, releasing her grip on the gun, although Clint saw her hand continue to rest over it. "I think we're all right."

The man let out what would have been a sigh of relief if he had been better able to catch his breath. "Here, miss, let me help you out of there," he said, moving to assist her.

"Wait. Get him out first," she insisted. "He has the more serious injuries."

"I'm sorry, Miss. I can't. You're up against a tree on the other side. You'll have to come out before we can reach him."

Tasha glanced suspiciously between Clint, the driver-side door, and their good Samaritan for half a second, as though assuring herself that there was really no reasonable way to get Clint out of the vehicle first, despite her presence in front of the best exit. Then, she nodded, and, with the assistance from their new friend Melvin, Natasha was able to be extracted from the car through the window.

Clint recovered enough that he was able to contribute appreciably to his own extraction. However, when Clint had finally cleared the vehicle, Natasha dropped down next to him, carefully but firmly pinning him to the ground with a knee to his shoulder, ensuring continued immobility.

"You," she commanded. "Look at me." When he focused on her she held up a forefinger. "Follow with your eyes."

Obediently, he followed her hand as she moved it around his field of vision, first closer, then farther away, while she carefully watched his eyes until she was satisfied with their progress.

"What's your name and rank and clearance level?" she demanded.

"Clint Barton, senior field agent, clearance level three," he intoned mechanically.

"What's my name and rank and clearance level?"

"Tasha, is this really necessary?

Both her eyebrows raised in an expression that would brook no argument.

"Natasha Romanoff, over-protective field agent, clearance level four, but," he continued peevishly, "you'll be lucky if I don't get Coulson to bust you down to a twelve if you don't get off my shoulder."

"Not even Fury can drop me down to a clearance level twelve on a scale that only goes down to ten," she said dismissively. "Just answer the questions."

"Come on, Nat."

"All right, hot shot, tell me what time zone we're in, and I'll lay off."

"Eastern," he said promptly.

"Fine," she said, removing her knee and sitting down next to him. "You have proven that your skull is exceedingly thick. You have a knot the size of my fist on the side of your head, by the way."

Clint pushed himself up on his elbows, suppressing a groan in case Nat decided to practice her version of a Florence Nightingale impression again. Once sitting up, Clint silently, but with no attempt to conceal, looked Natasha over for injuries, but outside of the multitude of tiny nicks and scratches covering her right side, most of which would be healed in a couple of days, he could identify no wound.

"Sir, could you call the local law enforcement?" Clint asked their new acquaintance whom, they had discovered during their extraction, had been the driver of the eighteen-wheeler that they had nearly collided with at a terminal velocity.

"Son," Melvin said indignantly, "I already did. They should be on their way." And, indeed, as though summoned by the mention, sirens could now be heard in the distance.

"Of course," Clint said apologetically. "Thank you." Clint turned to Natasha. "So do you call Phil, or do I?

Natasha grimaced. "I'll throw you for it," she offered.

"Fair. Ready?"

Nod.

"Go."

Natasha held out a fist, and Clint held out his hand flat, palm down.

"Ha! Paper beats rock. You make the call," Clint announced with a grin.

Natasha swore in Russian and pulled herself to her feet.

Clint handed her his phone so that she would not have to dig around in the vehicle for her own, and Natasha moved to a discreet distance to make the call. By the time she returned and sat down next to Clint who had been chatting about the wreck with Melvin, officers and paramedics had pulled up to the side of the road. When Natasha began to massage some of the muscles in her neck, Clint realized with chagrin that they were both in for one hell of a case of whiplash.

"How did it go?"

"I suspect that I now know what it would have felt like to tell my parents that I had wrecked their car," she said thoughtfully. "He was more upset than I expected."

Clint tried to imagine Coulson "How so?"

"He got really quiet, you know, even for him. It was a really frigid silence."

"Oh. That's bad."

At the orders of their handler, Clint and Natasha spent the next three days confined to base, a decision that caused them no end of vexation. There was, they argued, no reason to penalize them for someone else offenses, the extent of which they had learned about soon after the wreck.

The vehicle that had hit them was found by local law enforcement several hours after they had returned to base. It had been left abandoned in vacant lot, and when the plates were run through the system, the vehicle came up as stolen. Inside the vehicle, there were several empty beer cans littering the floor boards, and in the glove compartment, the officers discovered nearly three ounces of PCP.

Despite his agents' arguments and much to their confusion, Coulson remained unrelenting concerning their movements, and as they were not actually on vacation time, they were forced to comply. When asked his reasons for his decision, Coulson pointed out tersely that as their handler, he didn't need to give them reasons for his commands which surprised them more than anything else had. Unlike many other handlers, Coulson was usually free with explanations when his agents asked for them, believing information more important than strict discipline. It was already disquieting to have Phil noticeably upset; it was almost down-right disturbing to not know why.

With their original plans for visiting nearby historical sights and museums terminated, they were at a loss for occupation. Although neither would have been willing to admit it, they had both been looking forward to the chance to play tourist, eager for the unusual opportunity for comparatively quiet pursuits. Confinement to a relatively small base, however, had not been part of the plan. Fortunately for Clint and Natasha, the local SHIELD agents were very accommodating, willing to sympathize with the plight of the base-restricted visitors, and happy to assist in warding off cabin-fever.

By the time they left at 0500 hours on Friday morning heading across the Atlantic, they had both had almost completely recovered from the wreck and were more relaxed and refreshed than they had expected to be.

As it turned out, they would both need it.


	3. Chapter 2 - In Proving Foresight

**Dear Readers,**

**Here's you latest installment of crazy adventures. Really hope you're enjoying it. Just as a note, the entire title did not fit. The full title is at the top of the story.  
**

**-BT**

Chapter Two  
"In Proving Foresight May Be In Vain"

Clint and Natasha leaned over the large map which Phil had unfurled. The three SHIELD agents sat around a broad table in the hotel suite which was serving as the command center for the duration of the assignment. The two field agents studied the map as their handler briefed them on the operation. It displayed the area which was to be the location for their next mission, the premises of a business which encompassed several buildings including an office building several stories high. The office building stood some distance from the three factories that stood in the south-western quadrant of the map.

"This is the campus of a firearms and munitions company that you will be infiltrating at 0200 hours. The entire campus is surrounded by fencing approximately five meters high and the barbed wire at the top is a live wire," Coulson described as he pointed out the marked perimeter. "They aren't kidding around either. They've got enough volts going through that thing to make Romanoff's Spider Bites look like a party trick, so be careful."

"Good to know," Clint said. Phil saw him glance down at Natasha's encircled wrists. Clint was quite familiar with the kind of damage that her "spider bites" could do as he had seen first-hand the hell she had wrought on the enemies of SHIELD with the high-volt cuffs. A couple of Research & Development agents had engineered the electric weapons a few years back, shortly following her promotion to full agent, after consideration of her fighting technique. She had taken to them like a fish to water, gleefully zapping the ever-living out of any opponent who made it within arm's reach.

"The factories have the heaviest security, but fortunately we want you in the main office building," Coulson continued. "The building locks can be switched off remotely, allowing entry with a pass-card." From a folder, he removed a plastic card with a magnetic strip, similar to but slightly thicker than a credit card, and handed it to Natasha, who took it and slipped it into a small case on her belt.

"There are actually two parts to this operation," Coulson went on. "Romanoff, you'll be infiltrating the office building. Barton, you're going to be here." Coulson pointed out another structure in the north-western corner of the map with a smaller footprint than the other structures. "This is the transmission tower for the whole facility. Any breach in the security of any of the buildings or any alteration in their status is transmitted to a security company off-site, and a call will go in to local law enforcement. A loss of transmission will also set off the alarm. Barton, you will be setting up a false transmission and while simultaneously cutting the real transmission off. After you throw the switch, you can also unlock the deadbolts on the office building. The card that I gave Romanoff is activated to open the front doors from that point. Romanoff will need to make her way up to the server rooms on the top floor. You'll need to plug in your hard-drive into the system and download several files."

"What will I be looking for?" she asked.

He handed her a list. "These are the folders I need you to copy, although you will almost certainly need to get through a lot of protection. I.T. has provided some programs that should help you with that."

Natasha produced a small portable hard-drive marked with a red hourglass on the side. Coulson took it and plugged it into the laptop at his elbow.

"What kind of files will I be downloading?" she asked.

"Record of sales. We need to know what has been sold and who has it. The head of this company is a popular supplier for some really bad people. There are plans to run ops against some of his known customers, and we need to know what they're packing and plan accordingly."

"Who is the supplier?" she asked.

"It's a man called Kyrylo Falkas."

Phil watched as Natasha tilted her head to the left as she considered the moniker.

"I know that I've heard the name before," she said hesitantly, "but I can't seem to place it."

Phil was aware of Clint shifting uncomfortably, and by the look on Clint's face Phil knew that he had figured out who Falkas was and didn't like the answer. Honestly, Phil wasn't a fan of where the conversation was about to go any more than Clint, but it was bound to happen eventually.

"You've had previous dealings with Falkas," Phil said.

He could see her run though a mental check list, and, when she finally looked up at him in confusion, he knew that the penny had not dropped.

"You were not, at the time, working on the side of the angels," Phil explained gently, using a phrase more often employed by an earlier generation.

Natasha stiffened, and Clint shot her a worried glance when he knew she couldn't see him do so.

When Clint had first received the termination assignment for the Black Widow, he had gotten full access to her file, such as it was at the time, and Coulson knew that he had become very familiar with her most notorious exploits. Coulson was under the strong impression that Clint hated the memory of the mission, less so due to the knowledge of the terrible things Natasha had done – something for which Natasha blamed herself much more than Clint did – and more for the fact that he had been within inch of killing her before something had changed his mind. Clint had never said exactly what it was that had made him think that taking out Natasha Romanoff was a mistake, but his attitude concerning the operation was clear to Phil.

Many agents partnered long-term often became very close and protective of each other, and these two had become closer than most. He was certain that any day now they would just start finishing each other's sentences. It was easy to believe that Barton would not like to be reminded that there was ever a time when he had Romanoff in his cross-hairs with every intention of eliminating her.

Natasha had been silent as she searched her memory again in the light of this new information, her face tight, losing all of the expression that it had shown just a moment before. "I think I know what point you're referring to," she said, her tone carefully neutral. "I'm sorry. At the time, I was told what the job was, but they didn't often think it important to tell me who it was for or why. I may have only heard the name in passing."

Phil gave a slight nod of understanding before he continued with the briefing as though nothing had changed. "Once Romanoff finishes with the download and is out of the building, Barton can restore the original transmission with no record of the security breach."

"What is the security like?" Clint asked. "Any feet on the ground?"

"There are two guards on duty overnight at the gatehouse here." Coulson pointed to a structure on the western perimeter. "There are cameras scattered throughout the grounds, all marked in green on this map, but they will not be hard to avoid. The camera feeds all run to the gatehouse."

Coulson grabbed a tablet that sat next to him on the table, and, with a few quick swipes, he opened a folder to display a skeletal three-dimensional image of the office building. Both Clint and Natasha leaned in to get a better view.

"The elevators will be locked down for the night, so you'll have to take the stairs, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, the architect of this building decided to design the stairs so they don't line up at each level, so you'll be going a bit to the right at the top of each flight to get to the next flight. Don't ask me why it was designed that way. Perhaps someone thought it was clever."

Natasha shrugged, untroubled by the quirk in the architecture.

"When you come back down, you can take the emergency staircase on the south side of the building straight down if you wish," he said, pointing to another set of stairs that ran down the side of the building, "It will exit out near the front doors, but that is an exit route only. The doors are designed to prohibit re-entry into the building."

There was a small beep from the laptop as the programs that Coulson had copied onto Natasha's hard-drive finished loading. He removed the drive and handed it back to her. He also pulled two tiny cases the size of jewelry boxes out of his pocket, handing one to each of them.

"Those are your new communications units. I had R&D send them to me after Tasha's failed during the last mission. They are brand-new, state-of-the-art, so try not to lose them."

"The primary rendezvous point will be on the east side of the office building, just here," he continued, "and the secondary will be on the south side of this factory here." After Coulson had identified the end points, he looked up at the two agents. "That about covers it. Any questions?"

Clint shook his head.

"Tasha?"

Natasha looked up from her momentary abstraction. "No questions."

Phil nodded and rose from the table. "Okay then, grab your dinners. In a few hours, we'll be under way. He picked up the lap top and headed for the door to the next room. Just before he was out of the room he heard a chair being dragged across the floor, and he glanced back. Both of his field agents had their backs to him. Clint had pulled his chair over closer to Natasha's and sat quietly waiting for her to speak.

"One day," she said after a while, "I want them to regret ever laying eyes on me."

Clint, who knew her better than anyone else alive, didn't have to ask who 'they' were; he just put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a brief hug, planting a quick peck on the top of her head.

"I'll see what I can do," he promised.

Phil turned again to leave the room, shaking his head in wonder and amusement.

He could not believe that neither of them had figured it out yet.


	4. Chapter 3 - The Best Laid Plans

**Dearest Readers,**

**Here's the third chapter, on time as promised. I hope you enjoy it. I really, really do. Someone **_**is**_** reading this, right? I didn't want to worry about it, but as I've gotten zero response in the last twelve days and two chapters, I have to admit that I don't honestly know if anyone's even gotten past the prologue. Seriously, I'd take even a review saying "You're a terrible author with the literary grace of wood chipper. Go die in a plague." That way I know someone's actually **_**opened**_** subsequent chapters. I'll admit it: I have a fragile ego and fear a lack of validation. Also, I'd like to know that I'm not throwing this stuff into an empty void, never to be seen by another human's eyes.  
**

**Also, the full chapter name was cut off again, and the complete title can be found at the beginning of the chapter.**

**Have fun, kids!**

**BT**

Chapter Three

"The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men"

Natasha was standing in the shadows of the office building when Clint confirmed that the alarms were down.

"The alternate transmission is up," came his voice over the comm unit. "Black Widow, you are good to go."

She swiped the faux-ID card over the sensor next to the door, and it chirped its acceptance just before she heard the click of the door unlocking. She pulled the door open and slipped inside the silent lobby. "I'm in the building," she verified.

The ground floor had one light permanently on for every ten installed, illuminating small spots in the large expanse of shadows. Natasha stepped noiselessly on the white marble tiles over to the wide staircase that led up to the next floor. She jogged up the first two flights of stairs, unconcerned about the muted tap made with each tread, secure in the knowledge that she wouldn't meet so much as an aging night watchman in the deserted building, so when she heard the crack of a gunshot as she reached the top of the second flight, her reaction to it had everything to do with years of training hard-wired into her body.

In a fraction of a second, she was kneeling down in the cover of the stairwell, cursing her foolishness as she drew out both of her guns out. "Black Widow to Control, you did say that this building is supposed to be deserted, right?"

"Yes, it is," Coulson's wary reply came over the comm. "Why do you ask?"

"Someone didn't get the memo."

"What are you seeing?" he asked.

Natasha popped her head around the corner and back in an instant, although this action still provoked three more shots to be fired. "I've got five in this hall with no real cover to speak of. A shame for them." She sprung out into the hallway staying low to the ground, sliding across the tile floor and getting off several shots before coming to a halt. By then, she had dropped all of her targets, and the few shots they had managed to fire had gone wide.

She kept her guns up for another moment, listening for the sound of movement as the echo of her shots died away, but she heard nothing.

"Widow, I want you to turn back. Hawkeye, get ready to reset the alarms," Coulson said.

"Hold on," Natasha said. "I've already taken out the threat." She was up and moving again, down the hall and up the next flight of stairs, proceeding more quickly now and with tactical precision, checking doorways and corners before continuing en route. Mentally, she was upbraiding herself for relying so heavily on the intelligence report as to let her guard down, even a little bit.

Despite her caution, she almost found herself caught off-guard again when a door opened behind her, and she turned to face more of the unanticipated resistance. Although there were more opponents in this second wave, their close proximity actually made her job easier as it allowed her to play to her strengths. Her tactical genius had always shown brightest in melee combat. Her mercurial maneuvers enabled her to weave though the combatants surrounding her, constantly avoiding the line of fire. She could not be faster than a speeding bullet, but technically she didn't have to be. She just needed to be faster than the gunman. If she stayed in close, she found it easier to stay out of the crosshairs long enough to dispatch the people holding the weapons.

One school of thought – one that Natasha endorsed – said that it was better to have more attackers when fighting at close range because it added to the chaos, and they had a greater chance of shooting each other than the person that they were aiming for. Natasha increased that chance by ducking behind her attackers and knocking the guns aimed at her in the direction of the other guards until finally she had felled all members of the ambush after personally firing only three shots.

She took a brief moment before moving on to really examine her attackers. These men were not minimum-wage night watchmen hired to stare at screens all night, but genuine security. They had all been equipped with AK-47s, and, although they had not been, as far as she could tell, especially skilled, they clearly had been training.

With this realization in mind she began to move quickly up the stairway that lead up to the next floor.

"Black Widow," Coulson's voice came over the comm, sharp and tense. "What is your status?"

"I'm heading up to the fifth level. I've dealt with the additional combatants."

"Hold up. There were more?" Hawkeye asked. "How many?"

She paused, listening to the sound of footsteps echoing though the walls. It took a moment for her to ascertain that the steps were coming from both the floor above and below. She swore silently.

"I'll have to get back to you," she said wryly. "Apparently, I'm not done counting."

She heard Coulson say something, nut she couldn't make out the words over the gunfire. She took out the first gunman who came from the stairs ahead of her and grabbed him before he fell, using the body as a shield when the other gunmen fired on her from the stairs above. When she ran out of bullets, she dropped her own guns and reached around the body she was holding to the assault weapon that was still strapped over the man's shoulder. Aiming as best she could while supporting a dead body in front of her, she took out the remaining guards at the top of the stairs. They went down just in time.

The sound of the footsteps coming up the stairs behind her was becoming a pressing matter that required her immediate attention. Turning to face the threat below while maintaining the body as cover was clearly impractical, so she used the momentum of her turn to hoist the dead man onto the oncoming enemies coming up the stairs. It had not been possible to pull the weapon off the body, but the confusion caused as the dead gunman crashed down into the hoard below gave her the time she needed to get up the rest of the stairs. She had decided to add to the chaos in her wake by tossing three explosive charges down the stairs during her retreat before she ducked around the corner, kneeling down and covering her ears to protect them from the blast. After the explosion, she wasted no time in pulling the AK from the body nearest to her, and, staying low, she aimed it around the corner, taking shots at anything that moved.

It was only then that she heard Coulson through the comm.

"Black Widow, report!"

"Here," she responded, as she picked up a couple of extra clips off the surrounding bodies. She headed down the hall for the next staircase. "Give me a couple of minutes. I'm a bit busy."

She took the next set of stairs two at a time, moving at top speed and taking care to be absolutely silent. When she approached the next level, she took the last few steps hugging the right wall and came to a stop before the step, listening carefully. After a couple of seconds, she threw a blind punch around the corner. The left-handed punch wasn't very strong, but when it connected, it also delivered several hundred volts of electricity. She took the tiniest fraction of a second to feel smug about that trick before she got down to the business of dealing with the rest of the gunmen while Coulson yelled in her ear, demanding a current status.

It was not a simple thing to reply. As she made her way through the levels of building, she seemed to constantly find herself with a fresh batch of opponents, right on the heels of the last group, often coming from all sides, almost like a swarm. It seemed that for every two steps forward, she was forced to take one step back, slowing her progress to a crawl, and some part of her realized that if it weren't for the outrageous amount of adrenaline coursing through her body just now, she'd be more than just a bit frightened.

Finally, after what seemed like an endless number of skirmish, Natasha found herself the last person standing in the hall of the floor just below the server room. While her left ear had been somewhat protected by her comm unit, her right ear was aching from the cacophony of gunfire, and there was a slight ache in her left arm but it was so minor that she barely noticed it.

"Black Widow to Control," she said, heading up the final flight of stairs, still trying to catch her breath from the last fray. "I've got the threat under control." She hesitated before honesty compelled her to add, "For the moment."

"Black Widow, I want you to get out of there now," Coulson commanded. "This has gotten way out of hand."

Natasha halted half way up the stairs. "No, wait. I'm nearly there," she insisted. "I can handle this."

"Widow," Coulson began, and by the tone of his voice she could tell that he was not in the mood for an argument.

"Listen," she implored him, "I need to take care of this. I'm not going to get a whole lot of chances to undo some of the damage that I've done. I am so close."

When there was not an immediate response, Natasha just knew that she was about to lose the argument. She hadn't realized how much she wanted to do this until now, and she could not stand the idea of turning back. "Please, Phil."

"Fine," Phil said finally, "but I want Hawkeye to back you up. Hawkeye, do you copy?"

"I'm already on my way," Clint said. "I'll be there in less than two minutes."

Natasha wasted no time. She ran up the last few steps and carefully made her way down the last corridor until she reached the door to the servers without so much as a whisper of opposition.

Natasha ducked into the server room with a feeling mildly relieved, and the door swung closed behind her. She walked into the room, glancing around for a terminal.

"Okay," she said, resuming her focus. "I'm in the server room, and if I can find the terminal and get three minutes of uninterrupted time to work, I can pull the files from… oh, hell."

Natasha had turned a corner to find, sitting on a desk next to the access terminal, an unsettling amount of explosives hooked up to the computer by a spaghetti-tangle of wires. The monitor of the computer had a timer displayed very prominently, and the time was counting down. _4:37… 4:36… 4:35… _

Clint's voice came over the coms link and lifted her temporary paralysis.

"Come again?"

"Black Widow, what is wrong?"

"We're scrapping the op," she said, turning on her heel and heading back to the door.

"What?"

"Abort. I repeat, abort the mission. We're getting out of here. Hawkeye, back up is no longer required. I need you to head to the secondary rendezvous point. The primary point is no longer secure."

"Widow, what is going on?" Coulson asked firmly, refusing to be put off.

"This building is wired," Natasha said in vexation, as she came up to the door that led back out into the corridor. "There is a timer set up to explosives, it is counting down, and we've got to get out now."

She heard Coulson over the coms let out a string of curse words, which was such an absolutely unique event in Natasha's experience that she nearly laughed as she grabbed the door handle and pulled.

It was locked. She was trapped. The whole building was a trap.

_4:16_

For the second time in under a minute, Natasha was stunned into momentary inaction.

"Black Widow, what is your location?" Clint sounded almost uneasy.

In that moment, she knew what would happen if she told him what was really going on. He'd come after her, try to help her, danger be damned, and she knew that she couldn't let that happen.

"Leaving as fast as I can," she said, carefully keeping her voice calm and reassuring. He might be able to reach her in time to get her out, but she wasn't willing to let him risk it. He had to believe that there was nothing wrong. She looked over the door, checking the lock, the hinges and the frame.

"What is the time on the device?"

_3:43_

"We have a bit more than five and a quarter minutes," she said firmly. It was time to attempt an escape. Natasha knelt down and threw a punch into the drywall next to the latch. The drywall crumbled into the interior of the wall. She threw two more carefully placed punches and began to pull away at the broken drywall to leave a hole about a foot and a half in diameter. It was not a comfortable process, but it clearly got the job done.

_2:52_

After she had cleared enough of the wall away, she moved onto the wall on the opposite side of the door, which proved more challenging, but once she was able to break through it was easier to increase the size of the opening. When she judged the area to be large enough, she reached through and felt around the outside for the latch, but when she did discover the latch her fingertips just brushed the knob, unable to gain purchase.

_1:59_

"Black Widow, where are you? I can't see you at the front of the building." Now, there was a definite note of worry in his voice.

Natasha sighed in frustration. The idiot had come after her anyway, even after she had told him that she was fine! He was too close. She had to get him to leave! "I thought I told you to meet me at the second rendezvous point," she snapped. She started to chip away again on the edge of the far opening. "I left going down the northern emergency stairwell. It was closer. Now, if you don't get going, I'm going to get there before you do!" She reached through the opening once again, and this time she was able to achieve a grip on the latch and turn it.

_1:16_

As soon as she was able to pull the door open, Natasha shot down the hallway like a bat out of hell. She bolted down the corridors that led to the emergency stairs. When she came to the stairwell, she practically hurled herself through the door, and she started down the stairs at full speed, taking the steps two and three at a time.

_0:14_

Clint looked around for Natasha to appear at the second rendezvous point, half expecting her to materialize by his side out like a ghost out of the darkness. He knew she was very good at disappearing, but he wanted the reassurance of a visual.

"Are you here yet?" she asked over the comm, sounding unusually out of breath.

"Yes," Clint said. "I've been looking for you!"

_0:09_

"Oh, good." The relief in her voice was palpable.

_0:08_

"Where are you?" he demanded, becoming really angry. Nothing came back over the coms.

_0:07_

"Nat?"

_0:06_

"Natasha!"

Radio silence continued.

At last, a truant brain cell finally threw up a grossly-overdue red flag, and the blueprints for the building that Natasha had been infiltrating came up in his mind's eye. That was when he realized that she had been lying.

_0:05…0:04…0:03…_

There _was_ no northern stairwell in that building.

Natasha was practically falling down the staircase, but she wasn't fast enough, and she knew it. She was close, so very close, but before she could get halfway down the final flight, time ran out.

Hawkeye had taken off at a dead run toward the building, but he had not gotten ten strides out when the ground shook and the air vibrated with the explosion. Clint stumbled back partly from the force of the explosion but also from shock. However, it took panic less than two seconds to take over, and he was off again.

"Hawkeye, I have lost Black Widow's com signal. Can you confirm a visual on Widow?" Coulson's voice was very hard.

"Negative. Black Widow never left the building. I'm going in after her."


	5. Chapter 4 - Go Often Awry

**Okay, so I **_**know**_** that this one is late, and I take full responsibility. As it turns out, my beta-readers' lives do not revolve around me. Being determined to make sure that I delivered high-quality work, I decided to wait for their edits before handing this over. As always, I cherish knowing any and all of your thoughts on my proffered prose.**

**All my love,**

**Ballerina Terminator**

Chapter Four

"Go Often Awry"

An internal switch had been flipped, and autopilot took over for Clint. When he entered the dilapidated building, he barely noticed the half collapsed structure around him except to recognize that Natasha was not present in his immediate surroundings. Miraculously, some of the building's emergency lights remained on, providing nearly enough light to see by. Clint made his way over to the emergency stairs, working around rubble and leaking water pipes until he reached the door and pulled it open.

The reinforced nature of the emergency exit had spared it from much of the damage, but not all. Even with the limited lighting, Clint could tell that the blast had been felt there. He had been prepared to take the stairs up as far as they would go, but he found Natasha on the very first landing, crumpled against and facing a wall, covered in a dusting of debris and grit.

Before anything, he checked her pulse, and, finding the heartbeat, he reassured himself that she was indeed breathing. He was, of course, perfectly aware that someone who could have any kind of neck or spinal injury should not be moved, but the situation didn't allow for much choice. Pulling from his field-medic training, he checked her spine for possible breaks or injuries until he satisfied himself that there was at least no readily apparent damage before he cautiously moved her onto her back in order to assess her other injuries. It did not take a medical degree.

The jagged end of a rib protruded from her midriff, and he suspected her left shin bone would likewise have been perfectly visible had the leather of her boot proved less durable. A cut on her head very near her hairline appeared to be relatively small but seemed to bleed profusely. In fact, there seemed to be quite a lot of blood everywhere, mixing with the dust and creating a gruesome kind of mud that caked onto her skin and clothing. Clint carefully brushed away the dirt around the laceration before applying pressure.

"Coulson, Black Widow is down, and I need med-evac to the nearest hospital." There was no response from Coulson over the comm unit. "Coulson, do you copy?" The silence over the comm continued, but another sound caught his attention.

Natasha gave a small groan before her lids slid back from her eyes very slowly. For a moment, he thought she was looking at him, but he realized that her gaze was unfocused.

"Natasha! Nat, look at me!"

She blinked a couple of times before shutting her eyes tight and opening them again, obviously making a huge effort. Finally, her gaze slid into focus.

"Tasha, what happened?"

No response, just apparent confusion, and her eyes were beginning to drift close again.

"No, no, you have to stay with me," he said, placing his free hand on side of her face as he tried to direct her gaze. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, and he gently removed the comm ear-piece from her left ear. Natasha's eyes widened a bit as sound again entered her experience.

"Tasha? Can you hear me now? Please, tell me what happened?"

There was a momentary struggle to concentrate before she responded. "Locked in," she muttered. "Had to break out. There wasn't enough time."

Her attention started to wane again. Clint brushed away some of the strands of hair that had matted to her face by blood, and spoke to her firmly.

"Please, Nat, I need you to stay with me. Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"

Again, she blinked blearily, showing no sign that she had comprehended the words that he was saying.

"Natasha, please, talk to me. Why didn't you tell me that you were in trouble?"

She looked at him then with full awareness and said so softly as to be barely audible, "I'm so glad you're okay." Then, her eyes rolled back and her head lolled to the side, and the bottom of Clint's stomach seemed to drop out.

"God dammit, Natasha!"

"Hawkeye," Coulson's voice came in over the comm. "I've scrambled the evacuation team, and they are locked onto your position. They will be there in less than five to airlift to the nearest medical facility. I will meet you there."

* * *

It had been two hours and eight minutes since Natasha disappeared into the O.R. surrounded by medical personnel and a pretty nurse, a young woman with short blonde curls, had guided him to a waiting area where he sat staring fixedly at the doors through which Natasha had been taken. Each second seemed to contain its own eternity of endless dread, and then suddenly the nurse with the blond ringlets reappeared, speaking to him insistently.

It was then he discovered that kind nurse spoke not a lick of English, and, as her native language was not in his repertoire, she finally took him firmly by the hand and led him up the elevators and down the hall to the room where Natasha had been taken after surgery.

He paused at the door of the room, which was illuminated only by a soft bedside light, and looked at his partner carefully. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and if it weren't for the bandage near her right temple and the oxygen and the IV lines, he could almost have believed that she was just taking a nap and the last few hours had only been a bad dream.

The nurse, with a sympathetic smile, firmly installed him in a chair immediately to the right of Natasha's bed. He watched numbly as the nurse moved around to the other side of the bed, smoothed down the sheets, and lay Natasha's arms at her sides, careful to avoid jostling the IV in her right hand.

After a minute, he carefully took up Natasha's left hand and examining the tiny scratches and split knuckles that had been meticulously cleaned and bandage where necessary. It was a surprisingly familiar sight. They were forever bandaging their own hands and helping the other to do so after scuffles and brawls. Her fingernails were unusually cracked and had debris packed under them, which Clint didn't understand, but there seemed to be a lot that he didn't understand. After a few minutes, the nurse left quietly, and he sat there with Natasha's hand resting in his as real, coherent thoughts began to seep back into his head.

It wasn't long before the thoughts began to overwhelm him.

_How did things go so wrong?_ he wondered. Everything deteriorated so quickly, and now Natasha was lying in a hospital bed, which she would hate, with a needle in her veins pumping drugs into her body, which she would hate even more, and since she wasn't awake, he hated it for her.

_How the hell did this happen?_

He tried to focus, but his thoughts were continually interrupted with the knowledge that she had been trapped in a building that was about to blow while knowing that she wouldn't make it out, the memory of the explosion, and the sickening terror that had gripped him when he thought he had lost her.

He rubbed his eyes with the palm of his free hand, trying to clear his head of all the crowding ideas that were vying for his attention, but it didn't help. The panic that he had, up until now, held at bay threatened to well up.

He had to resist the urge to squeeze her hand, scratched and bruised as it was, in order to reassure him of her presence and vitality. He wanted her to wake up so badly just to hear her tell him that she was all right.

_Please,_ he begged her silently, _please be all right. I need you to be okay._

Just looking at her seemed to be so difficult, and at the same time, it was all he wanted to do. Nothing made sense anymore, and he could not, for the life of him, figure out why!

He reached over to brush away a few of the stray strands of her hair that fell over her face, and his hand seemed to linger there, apparently of its own accord.

Then, suddenly, he knew.

Abruptly, all of the thoughts that had been flooding his mind all fled in order to make room for the one really big thought that immediately filled his world.

_Oh, shit. I'm in love with her._

* * *

When Coulson walked in, Clint was pacing the short length of the room like a lion in a cage, running his hands through his hair and shooting worried glances at Natasha. For her part, she continued to sleep drugged into unconsciousness by a cocktail of sedatives and painkillers. For now, she was blissfully unaware of the anxiety of the others in the room.

Barton hadn't even noticed the handler's presence, he was so caught up in his own distress.

This was going to be tricky, Coulson could tell.

"Barton, we need to talk," he said gently.

Clint froze, like he was preparing himself for the worst. He stared fixedly at the floor and asked, "Nat, is she…?" He spoke as though the words were being wrenched from him.

"Tasha's going to be just fine. I spoke to the doctor not two minutes ago, and he said that the injuries were all relatively minor. Two compound fractures, which always look much worse than they really are, a minor concussion, and a collection of cuts and bruises."

Clint dropped into the chair next to the bed letting out a shuddering breath that made Phil wonder how long it had been since he last inhaled.

"The doctor says that she needs to sleep more than anything else right now which might be the only thing that's delaying a serious conversation about the importance of listening to one's handler. She's not going to be happy about three months of desk duty, but there's not much she can do about that with a broken leg." Coulson paused before he got to what was really on his mind.

"Unfortunately, we have much bigger problems right now. Barton, we have a mole in the agency."

Clint just scoffed. "You think? After the meat-grinder that she just crawled through?"

Phil was actually a bit surprised that Barton had figured it out. It wasn't that Coulson didn't think he could; Clint Barton was actually quite intuitive, but it was clear to Coulson that he had other things on his mind.

"Right," Coulson continued. "Then you will appreciate why you and I need to head back to HQ as soon as possible."

Clint gave him a look that made it clear he thought Phil had taken leave of his sense. "You want me to walk out of here, leaving my partner – my best friend – alone in a hospital? Now?! Have you gone entirely Section Eight?" he demanded.

Coulson took a good look at Clint Barton then and knew he was looking at a man being entertained by a party of personal demons. It was exceptionally rare that Clint Barton found himself in such a bad place. Mentally, it just wasn't where he lived, but when he found himself there, he had a harder time finding his way out of it. Phil tried to go about things carefully.

"Look, I've spoken to Director Fury, and he agrees that it's absolutely vital that we take care of this infiltration immediately without letting the news of the mole go any further," Coulson started to explain.

"Sounds like your problem," Clint snapped.

Oh, to hell with it. "Actually, it's her problem," Coulson snapped back, pointing a finger firmly at Natasha, "because she's the person they are out to kill."

That got Clint's attention, jerking him right out of whatever grim reverie he had sunk into.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that every time something has gone wrong in the last month it has been her life on the line. Other agents have occasionally gotten caught up in the crossfire, usually you because of how often the two of you stick together, but she has always been involved. It wasn't so easy to spot in South America because we were working with such a large team, but now, none of the other agents are having any issues, and after tonight and the car wreck last week…"

"Wait, what do you mean 'the car wreck'? That was a drunk driver!"

"Looked like it, didn't it? Drunk driver probably high on PCP becomes violent and knocks some random car off the road, and it just happens to be yours. It was a pretty good set up, but it falls apart upon further investigation. When the vehicle was gone over by the forensics team, there were no finger prints on any of the surfaces, not even partials or smudged prints. None on the door, the wheel, the cans, not even on the bag of PCP."

"That's not hard to do," Clint said. "Any pair of gloves would do the trick."

"That's not all. Besides the lack of fingerprints, which, I will grant you, is not hard, there was no DNA evidence either, which is much harder. No hairs, no skin. That vehicle had been wiped clean. There wasn't even any saliva residue on the emptied beer cans."

"Are you saying you think someone poured out the beer and tossed the cans in the truck to make it look like a drunk driver?"

"When leaving out important intel for a mission didn't work, they staged an accident. Of course, when that didn't work, they went even further and set a trap. What do you think they'll try next when they find out that didn't work?"

"That's just it!" Clint insisted. "I can't leave her alone!"

"We're not going to leave her alone. I've got three agents on the way, and we can have two people on her at all times, but Fury wants us to keep it under wraps in case he wasn't working alone."

"Who do you have picked for guard duty then?" Clint asked suspiciously.

"Well, I called Inglehart first," Phil reassured him, and Clint relaxed visibly.

William Inglehart was a tall black man who was built like a house and was literally more than twice Natasha's size. Not long after she had joined SHIELD, the two had been paired up for a sparring match, and when she had laid him out in less than three seconds, he had startled her by laughing uproariously. Being Will, he had decided instantly that he liked her and had treated her as a favorite – if somewhat terrifying – little sister ever since. Natasha had been uncertain how to react to this, but Clint had just informed her that when Will Inglehart decided to be someone's friend that was usually the end of discussion. There would be no changing his mind.

"Agent Inglehart will be coming up from Sicily, and he should be here soon. I'll have him in charge. He's the most senior field agent, and he speaks the language. I've also got Rose Johnson and Jasper Sitwell coming. I called them all on a secure line, and they'll be here in less than two hours." They were both good agents that had worked under Coulson for years, and both had been friendly with both Clint and Natasha. Rose and Natasha had even been paired up on a couple of missions while Clint had been recovering from a minor bullet wound that had gotten badly infected.

Clint reluctantly agreed that the choices were good.

"You know who it is, don't you?" Clint said.

"Yes. I've gone through the computer records, and the one person on the intelligence for both the South American operation and this one is an agent known as Paul Martin. I've checked his computer logs, and he's gone over all her mission reports for the last year and accessed the briefing information for the missions that she's been assigned to before she even got briefed. He was sloppy enough to leave a trail. He has even been keeping tabs on the field reports as they are transmitted into the main system. I have not sent any official updates to HQ about this op for juts this reason, at least, not yet, but we need to go as soon as Inglehart arrives. We have to get to this guy as soon as possible and take care of this quickly and quietly."

Clint glanced over to Natasha, still hating the need to leave her, but he nodded.

_So,_ Coulson thought, _that's where things stand. It's about time at least one of them figured it out._ It was probably inevitable at this point, but Coulson was finding it damned inconvenient just at the moment. Still, now that he'd gotten Barton on board, Coulson knew he wouldn't have to worry about Clint's commitment to the grim task ahead. Once they got passed this, as far as Coulson was concerned, Barton and Romanoff could have all the time they wanted to sort things out, but until then, at least one of them still had work to do.

* * *

Agent William Inglehart arrived as soon as could be hoped, looking unusually grim as he entered the room. It had been silent in the room except for the sound of distant thunder heralding an approaching storm, but he spoke as soon as he saw Natasha.

"She going to be okay?" he asked, his own deep voice resonating like the thunder outside.

"Yes," Coulson answered firmly. "She just needs to get as much rest as possible." He drained the last of the coffee out of the cup and tossed it in the wastebasket before giving Clint an expectant look. Clint stood and hesitated, and Coulson, getting the hint, gestured for Inglehart to step out into the hallway. "Inglehart, if I could have a word before we leave," he said. "It'll only take a minute."

When they left, Clint took up Natasha's hand again. He felt a bit ridiculous trying to come up with the right words to say when she couldn't hear him, but he'd be damned if he was going to leave without saying them.

Lightning flickered in the distance, and the dimly lit room was briefly illuminated by the harsh, cold glare. After several seconds, the rumble of thunder, discernibly louder than the last report, foretold of the torments held in the coming storm.

Finally, he leaned over and whispered, "I'll come back to you, I promise."

Then, he brushed away her curls so he could place a careful kiss on her forehead. When he turned, Inglehart was standing at the door waiting, meticulously studying the ceiling. Clint didn't make eye contact, but Will clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. Clint gave only a slight nod in acknowledgement of the gesture of reassurance; his mind had already moved on. There was going to be hell to pay, and Clint Barton was going to collect.

Clint followed Coulson down the hall; however, before they left the ward, he paused just as they passed the nurses' station and turned back. Sitting at the desk was the blonde nurse that had helped earlier, typing up her reports. She looked up at his approach, and he was able, through simple gestures, to ask if the nurse would keep a close eye on Natasha.

Her sympathetic smile made another appearance, and she nodded her agreement.

He could only give her grateful smile before shot one more glance at the room where he had left Natasha before the turned to catch up with Phil.


	6. Chapter 5 - And Leave Us Nothing

**Okay, so I know it's late again (my Microsoft Office trial ran out, complicating things), but if it makes up for it in at least some small part, I will be posting the last two installments of the story this week. As always, I would appreciate your thoughts should you care to share them.**

**BT**

Chapter Five

"And Leave Us Nothing but Grief and Pain"

Most of the trip back to the states was dominated by silence. Before Phil had told him what kind of problems they were actually facing, Clint wouldn't have believed that anything could have torn his full attention away from Tasha, but now his focus had been redirected on the removal of the individual who had been responsible for all their recent trouble. If it hadn't taken him from Natasha, he would have been grateful for a job to do, a chance to channel his fear, anger, and confusion into an important task.

They were less than half an hour away from their estimated time of arrival at SHIELD HQ, still well before dawn, when Coulson cleared his throat.

"The update on the results of the operation will only be transmitted into the main system when we are ready to monitor Martin's movements. I want to see how he responds when he learns that this last attempt on Tasha's life was unsuccessful. I've checked his rotation schedule, and it would be highly unlikely that he would be outside of the agents' quarters at this time. The moment we get a reaction, we'll intercept him for interrogation. I've already discussed the matter with Director Fury, and we have been given complete freedom to handle the interrogation as we see fit."

"Good," was Clint's only response.

* * *

The man known to SHIELD as Paul Martin opened the door to exit the dark, silent infirmary and was shocked when Agent Barton's hand closed around his throat and half-carried, half dragged him back into the unoccupied medical bay. Agent Barton slammed Martin against the wall, forcing out what little air was left in his lungs. Despite the violent impact, Martin could just make out Agent Coulson stepping into the infirmary after them and waiting until the door was closed before flipping the light switch. The overhead light flickered on, and Agent Coulson turned the lock.

The messenger bag that had been slung over Martin's shoulder had dropped to the ground, and Agent Coulson wandered over to where Hawkeye had the intelligence operative pinned, dangling a foot off the ground and patted him down. Once Coulson had removed two knives and a gun from the man's person, he gave a slight nod, and Hawkeye dropped him. Martin slumped to the floor, gasping for air.

Martin could best be described as unremarkable. Neither tall nor short, neither thin nor fat, he was not handsome but was by no means ugly. He was, like the best of spies, meant to be forgettable. Even his hair color could not make the commitment to being either brown or blonde but wavered somewhere in between. His only decisive feature, sharp eyes that were a pale blue, were bloodshot and watered badly, and he quickly wiped them on his sleeve.

Barton had picked up the messenger bag and handed it to Coulson who unzipped it and began to pull out the contents, commenting on each as he set them out on a counter.

"Well, this is an interesting assortment of items for someone who works in Intelligence. No, don't speak. You will have your chance, but talk now and Agent Barton will be more than happy to shoot you. Ah, I see you have here a set of scrubs, a lab coat, a syringe, and a bottle of Succinylcholine, which, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, is used for anesthesia for surgery. Interestingly, when used outside of surgery, it will paralyze all muscles when injected into the blood stream, including the diaphragm, essentially suffocating a person to death while leaving a victim fully alert. Not a pleasant way to die, I should think, but certainly hard to trace.

"Now," Coulson continued in carefully measured tones, "all of these items in the possession of a man in Intelligence would be suspicious in the best of circumstances, but this last item is rather damning – a one-way plane ticket. I do believe that the destination seems familiar, but that might be because we were just there. Of course, I could ask you about what you were planning to do, but, to be honest, that takes very little imagination at this point. What I want to know is why. Here is where you talk."

Martin just glared at Coulson.

"Barton," Coulson nodded.

In a flash, Barton had grabbed a fist full of hair and hauled the man to his feet again, slamming his head back into the wall.

"Just so we are clear, this is not going to be the kind of situation where you get to call a lawyer. You are now on trial, and I am judge and jury. Agent Barton here will be the executioner if necessary, and, as it appears that you tried on multiple occasions to kill his partner, I'm sure that he would be happy to add some police brutality at no extra charge."

"You can torture me all you want," Martin spat. "I'm not going to talk. You will never find out what you need to know. Eventually, we'll get her."

Agent Barton's grip tightened, pulling the man's skin back from his face, but Agent Coulson's eyebrows raised in interest.

"You're American accent is good, even better than Agent Romanoff's. Hers does slip a bit when she's upset. Still, I would appreciate knowing more than the fact that you're Russian."

Up to this point Coulson's statements had calm, occasionally approaching conversational, but suddenly there was a hard, cold edge to them. "Tell me who wants to take Natasha Romanoff out."

Stony silence followed this inquiry.

"Fascinating. Well, if that's how you want to do this, we _are_ in the infirmary, after all. A bit of truth serum will not be hard to come by. Bring him."

"Sodium pentothal won't work on me," he declared defiantly.

Coulson looked almost amused. "Sodium pentothal? How quaint. We haven't used that in decades. We have something much more effective."

* * *

When Clint and Phil walked into Director Fury's office, the first golden glow of sunlight was seeping over the horizon. The office was still dark, the room illuminated only by the warm light of a small lamp on the director's desk. The head of SHIELD sat at his desk looking tired and irritable, evidently not happy to have lost so much sleep.

"Talk to me," he said wearily.

"Paul Martin's actual name was Pavel Markin, and his primary mission was to terminate Agent Romanoff," Coulson explained.

"Not the Russian government?"

"Not…exactly. At least, not officially. It appears that Agent Romanoff's former keepers have finally caught up with her."

"It could not have made them happy when she suddenly dropped off their radar."

"Yes, but it wasn't only that. They were genuinely shocked. They were so sure of their 'mental training' they didn't imagine she could ever be a flight risk. Mentally and emotionally speaking, she wasn't supposed to be capable of leaving, and they were livid when she did. Apparently, their feeling is that if they couldn't keep their pet assassin, then no one should get her. Markin was planted here to gather intel on her current activities and then arrange for one of her assignments to go wrong. When this proved less than successful, they called in a favor from a former client, Falkas, and set up a trap. Since that obviously didn't do the trick, Markin had finally decided to pump her full of poison and be done with it. I have contacted the agents with her instructing them to check the credentials of everyone that tries to enter her room. I'm not sure how long it will be before they realize they've been made, but once they do, I believe they will give up all pretense of subtlety. She should be safe for the moment, but we ought to move her as soon as the doctors clear her for transportation."

Fury pinched the bridge of his nose. His voice was carefully controlled when he asked his next question. "How long have I had this mole in my organization?"

"He started last October after the two individuals that we had first offered the Intelligence job to had either accepted a lucrative job offer in the private sector or met with an unfortunate accident."

Fury's expression darkened. "You're telling me that they have been meddling in our affairs for nearly nine months now! How much info did they get?"

"We found this on him." Coulson handed him a flash drive that Fury immediately plugged into his computer. "We were able to get an impressive amount of information out of him, and we've glanced over the files on the flash drive; but we haven't gone over his quarters or his desk yet."

Fury opened the first folder. It contained a series of pictures, and he flipped through the set. There were pictures of files, some paper and some taken directly from a computer screen – schedules, mission reports, and personal information from any agent that had worked directly with Agent Romanoff. Then, there were the pictures of his target mixed in with the rest. Fury saw pictures of her training, working on a reports, talking to himself and Coulson, and during her downtime – reading, eating, and spending time with Barton and other agents. He paused on a picture of Agent Inglehart talking to Barton and Romanoff while the two of them were practically bent over in hysterics at whatever story Inglehart had been telling them. It would have been a good picture of three friends being happy together, the kind kept someone might put on to a refrigerator or pin to a corkboard, as long as they didn't know where it came from. Knowing made it seem twisted, tainted somehow.

No one could ever accuse Nicolas Fury of being prone to sentimentality, but he was not unfeeling. Although sometimes it seemed as though she had always been there, a devoted and trusted agent, he remembered Natasha Romanoff when she first joined SHIELD. It might have been his own age coloring his perception of her, but she had seem little more than a child, and it hadn't taken a psychiatrist to see that she was damaged and burdened. It had taken a long time for her to be at ease around her fellow agents, and it had been even longer for her to imagine that they might actually _like_ her. It had taken years for her to find some kind of peace, and these people had planned to rip her away from it.

"He was working here alone?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Definitely. He had cohorts working for him outside the agency but no one else on the inside," Couslon affirmed.

"I want you to verify that; check all records, and then double check them."

"Of course."

Fury was silent for a long time, tapping a finger on his desk as he pondered his options. "What did you do with the body?" he finally asked.

"We moved him to the morgue," Coulson assured him.

"Was it messy?" Fury asked as though he knew that the answer would inevitably be 'yes.'

"Actually, it was quite clean. Not so much as a scratch on him."

"He had the Succinylcholine on him. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste," Agent Barton said bitterly, speaking for the first time since the meeting began.

This was really more than Fury could have hoped for.

"Right. Here's what is going to happen. I will go down in an hour and speak to the doctor on duty in the morgue today and make sure that she understands the situation, but otherwise, this conversation is not to leave this room. You are to repeat this information to no one unless I clear them personally. The last thing I need is a bunch of field agents who don't feel like they can rely on Intelligence or, worse, don't feel like they can rely on each other."

Barton's eyebrows furrowed. "Surely Tasha needs to know about this," he said warily.

"Barton, when I said no one, I meant _no_ one, especially not Agent Romanoff."

"Sir! There are people out to kill her! They almost succeeded! Twice! How the hell is she supposed to protect herself if she doesn't know to be on her guard?"

"Agent Barton, right now, she has three of our best and most reliable agents guarding her around the clock, and when she returns to headquarters, she will be surrounded by over a hundred more. How much more protection do you think the woman needs?"

"You can't keep her inside forever. Sir, you didn't hear Markin. They are not going to stop. They are going to keep coming after her until she's dead! You can't," Clint yelled, but Fury interrupted him, slamming his fist on the desk.

"Dammit, Clint, do you think I'm going to do nothing? You think I'm not worried about Natasha, too? What, pray, do you think she'd do if she knew that this was her fault? No, don't start with me. _I_ know she's not to blame, but that is not how _she_ is going to see it if you tell her. If Romanoff believed that she was endangering others by staying, she'd disappear within the hour to try to take care of the problem herself, regardless of injuries, if she had to _crawl_ to Russia to do it!

"Don't misunderstand me," Fury continued severely. "I am in no way saying that we're just going to sit back and do nothing. They had the gall to presume that they could come into _my_ house and target one of _my_ agents, and I will rain every possible hell down on their heads and wipe them from the face of the earth."

Fury took a deep breath and began again in more measured tones. "The two of you" – he looked pointedly at both Agent Barton and Agent Coulson – "are going to put together a team. Barton, you will be the commanding agent on location. You are _not_ to include Romanoff. I know it will be a significant tactical loss, but she is far too emotionally compromised. After that, you can pick whomever you wish. Outside of a global disaster, this operation will have the highest priority. Does that satisfy you, Agent Barton?"

Clint didn't break eye-contact, but he nodded curtly.

"Good, I'm glad," Fury said sarcastically before returning to business. "That being said, we are not going in without being fully prepared. We have the intelligence that Romanoff gave when she joined, but we have to assume that information is out of date. We have to gather as much information as we can before we go busting down their door. Also, I'd like this operation to be finished before Romanoff goes back to full active duty if at all possible, so I suggest the two of you get to work."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

When Clint finally got around to getting his head down, he could not, for the life of him, figure out how long he had actually been awake. When he tried to think through time zone changes, his sleep-deprived brain refused to cooperate so far as to do even the simple math, but the time his head hit the pillow, he was aware he had been awake for well over twenty-four hours.

So, then, if his brain refused to do even the most mundane tasks, why did his brain refuse to _shut up_?

It wasn't like he wasn't exhausted. Immediately after their meeting with Fury, he and Coulson spent hours systematically combing Markin's quarters, and they had covered every last inch, going so far as to pull up the carpet and tearing open cushions. They found a small number of handwritten notes that were so short as to be practically meaningless, and the two thumb drives had already been wiped clean. There had been a few useful files that they had been able to retrieve from the desk top computer, and Clint had been able to get into the man's e-mail account after some work; however, when all was said and done, they learned more about what the man had learned about SHIELD than anything about the man himself or his employers, and the work had been both tedious and fatiguing. Finally, Coulson had sent Clint to his quarters, instructing him to get some rest before they flew back to retrieve Natasha.

Now, he stared up at the ceiling while the mission replayed itself over and over in the theatre of his mind. Everything Natasha had said, word for word, had been seared into his memory by the white-hot fire of dread, and, for what must have been the millionth time, he wanted a chance to talk to her, demand to know what in God's name she could have been thinking when she had told him to leave when he might have been able to help her.

_Locked in. Couldn't get out. Not enough time. Glad you're okay._ The words repeated themselves over and over in his mind like a song stuck in his head.

Then, a new, hitherto-unconsidered idea crossed his mind, a question that came to him with such clarity it was as though someone had just asked it of him aloud. _What if you had been in her place? If she had been heading straight for where you were trapped with a bomb while the last few minutes on a timer slipped away? What would you have said to her? What would you have done?_ The answer made him feel at once better and worse: anything to keep her away, as far away as possible, even if it meant telling her that the sky was green and the earth was flat.

She had seen the time and done the math and had known that, if he had come for her, it would have been a close thing. She decided that it was too close and to keep him from trying to come after her anyway, as she must have known he would, she had lied to through her teeth to keep him at a safe distance. He knew this was true because he would have done the _exact same thing_.

Suddenly, the desire to speak to her had turned to near desperation. With exhaustion confusing his reason, he would have had a hard time putting his thoughts into words, but he just knew that if he could talk to her about what had happened, know her thoughts and feelings, gauge her reactions, it might make everything all right somehow.

If he could just manage to get some sleep…

Clint woke with a start at the sharp knock on his door. The light coming though his window seemed dimmer and it took him a second to realize that he had actually managed to fall asleep. He made his way through his living quarters towards the door, and when he opened it, he blinked in the bright lights in the hallway where Phil was standing, waiting patiently.

"Sorry to wake you, but we're scheduled to leave in about an hour, and I need to know now if I ought to grab a pilot or if you wanted to drive the jet."

Clint rubbed his eyes with his palms. "I'm good to fly. Just let me get a shower and some coffee, and I'll be good to go."

"Excellent," Phil said. "Oh, and by the way, Inglehart called around three. Natasha's awake."


	7. Chapter 6 - For Promised Joy

**My darling readers,**

**This is the last full chapter, however, the epilogue will be shortly forthcoming. Recently, I was reading though some Clint and Natasha stories that were posted earlier, and, as it turns out, there are some points to this story that were not _nearly_ as unique as I thought they were, but, even if I am not quite the special snowflake that I've believed, it is my hope that I have at least managed to put some personal touches and interesting variations into some of the more common themes and plots. Oh, well. As they say, it's all been done before! So, again, I will ask you to please tell me what you think, but I'd understand if what you are thinking is "Seen it."**

**You still have all my love,**

**Ballerina Terminator**

**P.S.- If anyone is interested, the chapter titles come from the penultimate stanza of the Scottish poem "To A Mouse**** On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough" by Robert Burns. (English translation, obviously.)**

Chapter Six

"For Promised Joy"

As it turned out, when Coulson had said that Natasha was awake, he meant that she had woken up, been horribly sick to her stomach, and had been injected with an anti-nausea medicine that had enough sedative in it to knock her out again and give her a chance to sleep it off. It was unbelievable. She was getting almost all of the things she hated in the world of medicine at once, and she was _not_ going to be happy about it.

The flight back seemed to take twice as long as it had before, and when their car finally reached the hospital, it seemed to take all of Clint's self-control to resist jumping out while the vehicle was still moving. To Clint's relief, Phil pulled up in front of the building to drop him off.

"Why don't you go on ahead?" he asked. "I'll park the car, and I'm going to talk to the doctor and see what needs to be done before she can be discharged. I'll be up after a while."

Clint was unbuckled and half way out of the car before Phil finished talking, slinging a backpack over his shoulder and yelling his thanks before he slammed the car door behind him.

He skipped the slow-moving elevator and headed for the stairwell, burning some of his nervous energy by taking the stairs two at a time until he achieved the floor he needed. He had only gone a few strides down the hall when he ran into Inglehart.

"Barton, you're back! Good. Romanoff will be glad to hear it."

"She's awake? How is she?" Clint demanded.

"She's fine. She just finished her lunch, and she's more than ready to go home," Inglehart said. "But listen, she's still having a bit of trouble with…"

Clint didn't wait around for the full report. He would have to remember to talk to Inglehart at the next opportunity about signing on for the job in Russia, but, at the moment, he had other things on his mind. He wanted to see Natasha now, for himself, to assure himself that she would be fine, and he was dying to talk to her.

When Clint stepped into Natasha's room at the hospital, she was sitting up and having the IV removed from her hand. Natasha's eyes were closed and face was tense but carefully neutral, as she was never willing to show her discomfort in medical settings, but she always looked a bit queasy in the presence of medical equipment, especially when it came to the pointy or sharp-edged variety.

The nurse - the pretty blonde he had met before - was in attendance, and she gave Clint the impression that she was perfectly aware that her patient was ill at ease. After the IV needle had been removed, the nurse put a soothing hand on Natasha's forearm and gave a light squeeze of encouragement. The worst now over, Natasha took a deep, steadying breath, her eyes still closed.

When the nurse looked up and saw Clint, a look of pleased amusement broke out on her face. She gave Natasha a gentle pat on the shoulder to gain her attention, and when Natasha looked up, the nurse gestured to where Clint stood in the doorway.

"Clint!" she exclaimed, momentarily distracted from the unpleasant process. "Where have you been?!" She winced a bit when she caught sight of the needle, but she gave a reserved but polite smile to show her appreciation to the nurse for removing it.

The nurse gave her another pat on the arm before turning to leave. On her way out of the room, she flashed a friendly smile at Clint which he returned automatically before returning his attention back to Natasha, who was, with great care, pushing herself fully upright and swinging her legs off the side of the bed. A plaster cast encased her right leg from toes to just above the knee.

The weather had cleared since he had left and with the late-morning sun pouring in through the windows, the sounds of conversation coming from the hallway, and Natasha awake and alert, the room seemed to be an entirely different world from what he had left.

"I can't believe that you would let me sit here in a _hospital_ for two whole days before springing me," Natasha chided. Natasha's tone was a mixture of complaint and disappointment, and the fact that she was actually making a complaint was testimony to exactly how stressful she found the situation.

"Sorry," Clint muttered. "I'm afraid that it couldn't be helped." It sounded lame, but he couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Well, you can tell me what was so important later. Inglehart tells me that I'm being discharged in an hour. Please, tell me that this is true," she pleaded.

"It's true," he confirmed.

Her relief was palpable. "Oh, thank God."

"You feeling all right?" he asked hesitantly.

"Fine, if a little worse for wear, but I have had a rough month," she said bit wearily. "Right now, I just want to go home. Although, I suppose I'll get stuck on light duty for the next two months with this leg like it is. Last time I was on light duty, I was doing translation work for weeks, although I guess it could have been worse. My French did improve considerably."

Clint felt rather off-balance by the nonchalant tone the conversation had taken. On the trip back from HQ, Clint had played out this exchange in his head at least a hundred different ways, thinking about the things he ought to say, but in none of the scenarios that he considered had Natasha been so completely unconcerned about the events that had landed her in the hospital in the first place. It was like there was an elephant in the room, but he was the only one to even notice that it was there. He tried again to push the conversation toward the recent events.

"You seem remarkably unfazed, considering…"

"Oh, right! Inglehart told me that the building that I was in exploded." She said this as though she was asking for confirmation, and she looked at him expectantly.

Now, Clint felt truly out to sea, and there was a growing feeling of apprehension about where this conversation was going.

"Would you care to elucidate?" Natasha prompted, eyebrows raised.

He realized that he had been staring dumbly while she had been waiting for some kind of response. "Wait, what?"

"Would you care to fill me in on what happened during the op?"

Bewilderment.

"Tell me what happened," she spelled out for him slowly.

"What? Why?" he demanded. "You were there!"

"If I was then I don't remember it," she confessed. "I am more than a bit fuzzy about events after a point."

"What point?" he asked, dreading the answer.

Natasha deliberated for a moment before responding. "I remember getting inside," she recounted, "and making my way upstairs. I remember that there were an awful lot of people there for a building that was supposed to be empty. They seemed to be everywhere!"

"And then?"

Natasha shook her head. "That's it. At first, when I woke up, I was sure that I was here because I had been shot. I did feel pretty torn up. Actually, I _was_ shot, but it was only a graze, thank goodness. I don't even remember when it happened either, but at least _that_ won't leave much of a scar." She lifted her left arm up to display two inches of tiny stitches that ran horizontally across her tricep. The injury had been concealed by awkward placement and so minor compared to the rest of her injuries that he hadn't noticed it before.

"Oh," he replied softly.

"And for some reason, my right ear hurts, and everything sounds a bit off."

"The ear piece in you left ear protected your eardrum from the blast," Clint said vaguely. "Your left ear wasn't protected."

"Oh, that makes sense. I'll need to be issued a new one, I guess. Hey, that reminds me. I don't suppose you brought me anything to wear?" she asked hopefully. "I understand that what I came in was not fit for rags."

Clint suddenly recalled the backpack that he was carrying. He took a few halting steps to cross the distance to the bed and passed her the bag. "Coulson had Hill pick out some things for you," he managed.

Natasha took it gratefully and began to rifle through the contents. "Bless her, she even gave me a choice." She began to review the articles contained therein aloud to herself, muttering under her breath.

Clint had become vaguely aware of her being more chatty than usual, but he dismissed it as the result of the environment; he knew that hospitals made her nervous.

The concept that was taking up most of his attention, the one idea that seemed to echo around in his head over and over, was _Natasha doesn't remember the bomb. Natasha doesn't remember the lie. Natasha doesn't remember anything._ He had watched his world shift before his eyes after nearly collapsing around him, and she was acting like nothing had changed!

He suddenly realized he had been relying so heavily on having the chance to talk to her about what happened in order to find some glimmer of hope. What he had wanted was some indication, some hint, that she - however remote the possibility - might love him back. He had told himself that he might not see any suggestion of it, but Clint never imagined that he wouldn't have that chance to look! With that chance gone, he also realized that he had no idea what to do. Absolutely none.

He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn't realized that she had spoken to him until she repeated his name twice.

"Hmm? Sorry, you asked me something?" He looked up to see Tasha looking at him with some anxiety.

"I had asked you if you liked the brown dress or the green shirt better, but it really isn't that important," she said dismissively.

"Clint, darling," she using a term of endearment that she normally employed when she was either especially pleased or especially worried, "you have barely said more than three sentences, and you've looked grim nearly since you walked in the door. Please, tell me what is bothering you." She gave him a bit of a half-smile. "If I understand correctly, I believe that I am the one who was supposed to have been blown up," she teased gently.

That last statement was too much for Clint. This conversation had simply become unbearable.

He stepped a little closer to her and said in a low voice, "I'm just glad that you are all right." As much to his surprise as hers, he leant over and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek that just brushed the corner of her mouth, before he strode out of the room, leaving a stunned Natasha to stare after him.

* * *

Half an hour later, long after Natasha had gone through the drawn-out process of clothing herself while hindered by a broken leg and a broken rib, Coulson came into the room bearing the papers for her release from the hospital in Budapest.


	8. Epilogue

**Well, my darlings, this is it all she wrote! Last chance to weigh in with your opinions about the story, so turn in your scoring card at the door on your way out! Hopefully the next story will be coming soon, and it will be my last pre-movie installment. It will be set during the events recounted in the graphic novel "Fury's Big Week" and may possibly be the only story that cannot stand alone from all my others. We'll see what happens.  
**

**Signing off,**

**Ballerina Terminator**

Epilogue

Natasha sat in Dr. Sumati Nabendu's office, having transferred herself from the wheelchair that her doctors insisted she continue to use to one of the exceedingly more comfortable chairs that the psychiatrist kept in her office. She relaxed into the soft cushions with unconcealed relief.

"Is your rib hurting you still?" the young psychiatrist asked in sympathy.

"Just a bit," Natasha admitted reluctantly, loath to own up to any weakness. "But they checked me over when we got back, and apparently the doctors in Hungary did good work. Also, the hearing in my left ear is a lot better, although I still get the echoing sometimes."

"And how is your head?"

"Honestly, outside of the bruising on the side of my head, it feels just fine. The headaches went away after the first day or two, and, most of the time, I don't even remember the stitches are there," she said, lightly fingering the edge of the bandage on her forehead. "Really, I'm feeling pretty good overall. I have to admit," Natasha continued apologetically, "I'm not sure why Coulson insisted on a full psych-eval for a minor concussion. It seems tad extreme."

Dr. Nabendu smiled compassionately. "I don't think its just the concussion that Agent Coulson was worried about. I understand that the op was a real catastrophe. If it makes you feel better, Agent Barton had to get one too."

"Really?" Natasha exclaimed, clearly surprised by the news. "He didn't say anything. When is he getting his eval?"

"He had his first," Sumati explained. "He's already spoken to me about the mission." _Among other things_, she thought with amusement. It was little wonder Coulson had ordered an eval for the whole team.

"What did he say?"

"Natasha, you know that I cannot share what I am told. It is confidential."

Natasha was silent for a moment. "I think he's angry about something, or at least upset," she said finally. "I keep thinking that I must have said or done something, but I couldn't tell you what that might have been. I've been through the case notes for the op, and neither Clint nor Phil said anything except that I found a bomb and tried to leave but I didn't get out in time. Still, I feel like there is something Clint's not saying, something that has made him angry, and I think it must have been me."

"Why do you think that?" the doctor asked, her voice concerned.

"This is going to sound… ridiculous, but I get the strongest feeling that he's," Natasha paused, searching for the right words, "trying to ignore me."

"You did give him - and Coulson - quite the scare," Dr. Nabendu reassured her. "Perhaps he's still recovering from the stress."

"Couldn't possibly have been too worried," Natasha deadpanned. "They both managed to be gone for almost two days, after all, leaving poor Will sitting in a hospital room to babysit me while I took a nap. Besides, all my injuries were relatively minor. I actually got _shot_ in the leg last year in Cambodia, and Clint said that if I could swear like I was then I could walk." Natasha was smiling now, amused at the memory.

"But, at least you were conscious after that," the doctor pointed out carefully.

Natasha's smile faded, and she gave a half-hearted shrug, willing to concede this fact at least. "I still feel bad for blowing the mission. It gets under his skin when things are botched," Natasha admitted cheerlessly.

"Your intelligence was horribly flawed. Surely, you don't think that he holds you responsible for that, do you?"

"Someone mentioned that someone in the Intel Department got fired," Natasha said, neatly side-stepping the question. "Is that true?"

"I believe there was a termination related to the incident," the doctor said, choosing her words carefully. She was one of the very few people who knew what really happened with the Intelligence Agent. Fury had made it very clear to her what was at stake. It was not often that Dr. Nabendu was read-in on current operations, but Natasha Romanoff's psychological well-being had been Dr. Nabendu's responsibility since she started at SHIELD, and it was almost certain that things were going to get complicated very soon. Hell, they already had. _Dammit! _the SHIELD psychiatrist thought in frustration. _Everything had been going so well!_

"Fury must have thought it was one hell of a screw-up."

"He takes the near-loss of an agent very seriously. He wanted to keep anything like that from happening again."

Natasha nodded gravely.

"I'm sure Barton doesn't blame you for what happened," the doctor tried to assure her. "It wasn't exactly your fault."

"I can't be sure that it wasn't my fault," she argued.

"Barton did mention that you still don't remember much about the bomb before it went off," Sumati stated, clearly inviting a response.

"I don't remember the bomb _at all_," Natasha stressed.

"That can happen with concussions. Sometimes the memories return, but, unfortunately, often they don't. To be honest, it could have been much worse. I understand that you remember everything before that though, yes?"

"Actually, my memory of the fight beforehand has become clearer, and I now I remember exactly how big a mess everything really was. It was like I kicked an ant hill. I hate to admit it, but, really, it was sheer luck that I wasn't shot dead. They seemed to be _everywhere_. I had to take guns off of some of them because I kept running out of bullets. I felt like a major war had broken out in a building. It was absurd!"

"And has the memory worried you or bothered you? I know it's not something you'd like to admit, but it would be perfectly reasonable to be scared by it."

"Honestly, I'm really not. I think I remember part of me being scared at the time, but now, it all seems so unreal, like a daydream. I almost feel like I ought to be more bothered by it than I am."

"Do you remember anything else?"

"Well, for some reason, I suddenly seem to remember how to make my father's stew," she said, rather puzzled at this last. "A lot of good that will do anyone, as I'm still rubbish at cooking."

"It's good that you are doing so well," the doctor said with a chuckle. "To be honest, I am quite pleased with how well you have been doing overall, but I do need to check that outside of the slight memory loss, you've no issues or problems at all?"

Natasha gave this question a minute of serious consideration. "Only one thing," she said finally, "that's really not a problem so much as just a bit… odd."

"Yes."

"It's just that for days now I've been having this dream where I am running down an endless flight of stairs."


End file.
